Friday, October 5, 2012

Vegan MoFo Day 5: Baba ganoush!

So that exam yesterday? It went about as badly as it could. I came out of it knowing I did badly but not knowing why. I really don't know how I could've studied differently to make that go well. And that is just a dreadful feeling.

SO. The point being: I was in a bit of a MOOD today and really needed a pick me up. So good thing I was already planning on making one of my very favorite dips in the world: baba ganoush!!

Baba ganoush, baba ganoush. One of the least beautiful, most delicious foods in the world. I thought about garnishing it with something green but I decided that would only make it look more grey by comparison. That's just who baba g is!

My baba g recipe is fantastically simple. It pretty much goes like this: cut some eggplants in half, slice the insides up a bit, brush with olive oil and broil on low for 45 minutes, turning once. Let cool in a sieve (to let some of the extra water out), then scoop out the insides and blend with a couple cloves of garlic, about 1 tbsp tahini per pound of eggplant, a tsp of salt and juice of a couple of lemons. Bam. DONE.

Today we had the most GIGANTIC eggplants. Check out this beast:

Literally the size of the Emperor's head. Which, by the way, is almost the same size as mine. (He has a huge head for a three year old!) Amazing. I got them for a song too.

For dippers, we of course had raw vegetables: celery, cucumber, carrots, and red bell pepper. As an extra special treat, I decided to bake bread too. I made za'atar foccacia and it was, frankly, fantastic. Here's a picture:

And our whole spread tonight:

(Sorry for the blurriness. We get home late on Fridays so of course all the natural light was gone by the time dinner hit the table.)

Yummm. A fine dinner.

Well, I need to go because I'm being paged-- by this baby who still isn't asleep at 8:30 p.m. So let me wrap this up with a picture of him being cute this morning: